Santa Cruz County Biographies
A. N. JUDD
Submitted by Kathy Sedler
This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm
April 26, 1845, A. N. Judd was born at North Lee, Massachusetts. Losing
his parents at an early age he was thrown upon his own resources at the age of
twelve years, being equipped for the duties of life with a total of three
months' education. His first employment was found in Wisconsin, where he worked
for a stipend of $7.00 per month, and, after pursuing various avocations, he
finally learned the wagon maker's and painter's trade.
At the outbreak of the Civil War he was at the Oro Fino River, in
Honduras. He immediately returned, and on August 9, 1861, he enlisted in Company
H of the Fourteenth Ohio Infantry. On the 6th of April, 1862, he had his first
experience of serious fighting, at the first battle of Donnelson, and now
carries a relic of that engagement in the form of an ugly scar from a severe
bullet wound in the neck. He was in the front during the first day's engagement
at Shiloh, "in the hornets' nest," where, to use his own expression, "it seemed
like one could reach up any time and grab a handful of bullets flying through
the air." His regiment was part of Prentice's Division, and was in the front
during the entire day of that desperately-fought battle. General Sidney Johnson,
that brave leader of the Confederate forces, fell within one hundred yards of
Mr. Judd's regiment, while leading in person the rebel forces in a last vain
endeavor to drive back the column which had so stubbornly resisted them. When
the battle began, at half past five in the morning, the field was covered with
underbrush and blackberry briers; by ten o'clock it had been swept by the leaden
hail as clean as a croquet ground. The desperation of this fight is best told by
the three thousand seven hundred Confederates found dead and wounded in a
fifty-three-acre field in front of Prentice's Division. As evening approached
his regiment was still fighting, oblivious of the fact that the right and left
wings had fallen back, and before they were aware of it they were practically
surrounded by the enemy and captured; but in the darkness of the rainy night
that followed, he with two others succeeded in making their escape. He was
afterwards transferred to Company A Sixth Iowa Cavalry, serving until the 17th
of November, 1865.
He was with General Sully's expedition for three years, fighting Indians
in Dakota and Montana. He was in Fisk's Corral. This historical encounter with
overwhelming odds of Indians was on the occasion of a train of one hundred and
twenty-one emigrants, under the escort of forty soldiers, passing through the
territory of the Sioux in 1864. A wagon broke down, and a detachment of twelve
soldiers was left to fix it.
They were suddenly attacked and eleven of them killed. Sergeant Ballard
made his escape to the main forces, which had taken advantage of the time
consumed in the massacre, and, dropping the inside wheels of the wagons, thrown
up a temporary breast�work. The Indians, estimated at nine thousand, surrounded
them, and as they were armed principally with only bows and arrows, and did not
desire to risk their heads, they were successfully held at bay for twenty-one
days. On the seventeenth day Sergeant Ballard succeeded in getting through the
lines and obtaining relief. It arrived as above stated, consisting of six
companies of the Eighth Minnesota Mounted Infantry. With this little band of
beleaguered fighters, eternal vigilance was more than the price of liberty; it
was the price of life. Fortunately for them, water was obtained by digging a
depth of twenty feet. Aside from the eleven soldiers who were killed at the
first charge, there were no fatal casualties, although one soldier was so
seriously wounded that he now receives the largest pension, $105 per month, of
any veteran in the United States. In a foolish endeavor to get the scalp of a
chief whose temerity had cost him his life, he got outside the fortifications
and was literally riddled. After nightfall the soldiers, guided by the groans,
crept out and brought him in. Both of his legs were amputated at the hip, both
arms were cut off, one above and one below the elbow, his nose and one ear had
been shot away, and yet he survived all that mutilation. This man's name is
Benjamin Franklin.
At the battle of White Stone Hill Mr. Judd was wounded in the knee by an
arrow, which pinned his knee to the saddle. When he was wounded in the battle of
Donnelson, he was in the successful charge under General Lew Wallace, since the
famous author of "Ben Hur."
When Mr. Judd was mustered out, he returned to Chicago, and came to San
Francisco in 1869, moving three months later to Watsonville; where he has
resided since, except five years when he lived in Fresno County. At this time he
was of the first directors in the Fowler Switch Canal Company, which owned a
canal thirty feet long, forty feet wide on the bottom, and five feet deep, and
cost $100,000. Apropos of this Mr. Judd is now interested in one of the largest
irrigating schemes in California. He owns two small farms, aggregating sixty-two
acres, and three hundred and twenty acres in Fresno County. He has fifty-two
acres of orchard near Watsonville, and was the first president of the Pajaro
Valley Fair Association, and is now the deputy assessor for this end of the
county.
Mr. Judd was married, in July, 1873, to Caroline Williamson, daughter of
William Williamson, a prominent pioneer of the Pajaro Valley. Five children have
been born unto them, four of whom are living, two boys and two girls.
HISTORY OF SANTA CRUZ COUNTY, CALIFORNIA.- E. S. Harrison,
Pacific Press Publ. Co., San Francisco, 1891